The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - PREVIEW： Epochs #162 ｜ Captain Cook - Part I

00:00:00.240 Hello and welcome to this episode of Epochs where I'm going to be talking all about the life and times and adventures of Captain James Cook and I am joined by Luca Johnson. Luca, how are you?

00:00:09.820 Hello, hello, good morning, yes.

00:00:11.700 Good to have you back.

00:00:12.480 Glad to be back, so glad to be back and talking about Cook.

00:00:15.640 Yeah, so it's a fantastic life, isn't it?

00:00:18.160 Yeah, it's extraordinary.

00:00:19.440 Really, really filled with adventure. I mean, I say that about lots of people, but this one sort of really is chock-a-block. 1.00

00:00:26.100 And I think the thing that's most extraordinary about Cook's life and the scope of the adventure that he had is just the humble beginnings from which it started.

00:00:35.080 Right.

00:00:35.540 Because he's one of those people that, if you'd have just looked at the circumstances into which he was born and you'd never have guessed that he could go on to lead just such an extraordinary life.

00:00:46.720 Yeah, that is one of the first things to say about him. He wasn't sort of destined to be a captain or, as you say, in the 18th century,

00:00:54.140 because his whole life is in the 18th century. You would have to be of a certain station in the world, right?

00:01:03.120 A gentleman.

00:01:03.980 A gentleman to dream of being an officer and a captain. And he wasn't really, was he?

00:01:08.400 No, not at all. So his father had actually come down from Scotland, sort of in the wake of the Jacobite rebellions of the early 1700s to sort of look for better work prospects.

00:01:21.040 And they'd settled up in North Yorkshire, where he'd met James's mother, Grace, and they got married.

00:01:30.080 And James Cook, named after his father, was the second son. And he was born into a little village called Martin, which even now is it's just sort of nowadays.

00:01:41.680 It's sort of just south of Middlesbrough and it's got about a few thousand people there even now.

00:01:47.460 So it's not the most assuming place in the world. But and ostensibly it seems like he had a very good childhood, like he had a good, strong family.

00:01:59.340 But when he was six, his father moved a little further to the south, to a place called Great Aiton, where he worked as a farmhand on the farm of a man called Sir Thomas Scotto.

00:02:14.440 And eventually, even within his youngest years, it was very, I think, was one of those, you know, you just get those naturally really well behaved kids who just you can't help but like them.

00:02:31.300 They just sort of a young little sweetheart in a way. It was very much like that to the point that Scotto, the owner of the farm, paid for him to go to school and to have sort of just a rudimentary.

00:02:44.440 education, which even back then was a leg up in and of itself from such low beginnings.

00:02:51.920 It's something to remember. We take it for granted in our world that everyone gets an education. It's weird.

00:02:57.800 In fact, it's a problem. You're not allowed to not to go to school, right?

00:03:01.140 Yeah.

00:03:02.100 Social services will come around saying, why haven't you sent your child to, you know, back in the 18th century, if you were poor, you don't get any schooling.

00:03:10.020 No.

00:03:10.460 Well, if your mum and dad are perhaps not literate, they don't take it upon themselves to teach you how to read and write or teach you numbers or anything or teach you how to swim or anything, you probably won't, might not get any instruction on anything.

00:03:25.240 So, yeah, to be sort of, to be paid for, to go to school and get your letters, yeah, makes a real difference.

00:03:34.980 Because, you know, without that, he certainly could never have been, never, have been an officer or anything like that.

00:03:41.820 No, not at all. And, but his, his dad did very well out of it as well. His dad quickly went on to become chief farmhand because his dad had a very good work ethic.

00:03:51.300 So it's very clear to see where the younger James got his from. And, but his dad, again, sort of always knew that he wanted more for his son than just working on the farm for his life.

00:04:05.300 So he eventually managed to, when James got to about the age of 15, 16, I believe it was, his dad had it arranged for him that he would go to the nearby seaside town on the Yorkshire coastline of Stathes,

00:04:18.780 where he would get an apprenticeship working as a shopkeeper with a man called William Sanderson.

00:04:26.900 And so with nothing really more than a spare change of clothes and the bare essentials, Cook walked for two days on foot from Great Aiton to Stathes to this little seaside town where he set up as an apprentice shopkeeper.

00:04:44.040 It's funny, it's another thing, isn't it, in the pre-modern world that I think people forget about.

00:04:47.680 You've got to walk most places. I mean, it's obvious when you say it, there's no, obviously no motor vehicles, but you also think, oh, you probably get a horse or a wagon somewhere.

00:04:58.780 No, most people, if you had no money, you walked.

00:05:00.940 Definitely.

00:05:01.580 If you want to go on pilgrimage to, to Compostela or Rome or Jerusalem, you're probably going to walk there.

00:05:08.840 Yeah. Yeah, I've got calves by the end of it.

00:05:11.460 Right, yeah. Yeah, you're going to walk across Europe if that's the sort of thing you want to do.

00:05:15.320 Yeah, so if you're going to go to the coast, you walk there.

00:05:18.960 You walk there.

00:05:20.340 Yeah, so, yeah, going on the coast, that was sort of, you know, again, perhaps a turning point.

00:05:26.700 Well, certainly would have been a turning point.

00:05:28.420 In many ways, yes, but what's remarkable as well, so the shop was a double shop.

00:05:32.720 It was a drapery and a baker's, and so Cook was left in charge of running the shop.

00:05:39.980 Obviously, most of the profits went to William Sanderson, but back in those days, if you were an apprentice to someone,

00:05:46.820 it was also just customary and seen as the decent thing to do that you give them, your apprentice, somewhere to stay.

00:05:52.980 You give them lodgings, but it wasn't the most, you know, affluent place.

00:06:01.040 And so James literally spent a few years sleeping.

00:06:04.360 His bed was under the shop counter, just sleeping under the counter.

00:06:08.700 And the family had their space, but he'd be in charge of, you know, taking stock and dealing with the customers

00:06:15.380 and shutting down, opening up, all the sort of things that you think of as being a part of, you know, shopping today.

00:06:22.320 But what's very clear is that even from that age as well, that the people who went in the shop very much liked him.

00:06:29.660 It was a very courteous young gentleman, young teenager.

00:06:33.360 And it also, being on that coastline, also gave him the chance when he was off work to go and hang around at the inn or the tavern

00:06:44.580 and mingle with the local sailors and the local fishermen.

00:06:48.240 And it was that that sort of led him to just sort of go around the bay every now and then with them on,

00:06:54.640 aboard their ships or their boats.

00:06:57.320 So it's at that time that he probably got a bit of a flavour for the seafaring life and the aspiration to go do that.

00:07:04.600 Hmm. Hmm.

00:07:06.320 Again, another thing to say in the 18th century, of course, the whole world of the Navy merchant or Royal Navy,

00:07:14.600 the whole idea of going to sea is extremely different.

00:07:18.160 Nowadays, it would be weird if someone, or not weird, it's just not very common that someone dreams of going to sea.

00:07:26.380 No.

00:07:26.620 Or wanting to be on board ship.

00:07:29.240 Like, you know, one person in 10,000 has got dreams of working on a cruise line or something.

00:07:35.040 Or their father is a fisherman and so they're sort of destined to be a fisherman or something.

00:07:39.860 The vast majority of people, it just doesn't cross your mind.

00:07:42.080 Never occurred to me.

00:07:42.840 But in the 18th century, it's just a massive thing.

00:07:46.180 It's just a whole vocation that is possible for someone.

00:07:49.600 Yes.

00:07:49.980 Right.

00:07:50.200 It's a whole world of something that's appealing, especially to young men, right?

00:07:57.180 Right.

00:07:58.000 Because also, we must say, it's very dangerous.

00:08:01.980 Now, if you want to be a fisherman or work on a cruise ship, you don't expect to die at sea, do you?

00:08:06.000 No.

00:08:06.400 No, not likely.

00:08:07.180 So it's just the whole concept, the whole part of the world that is involved in navies and seafaring is just very, very different in the 18th century, right?

00:08:20.800 Yeah, for sure.

00:08:21.500 But really, the thing that sort of ends Cook's brief stint as a shopkeeper is one day a, and it's remarkable that we have this chronicled, but, you know, from letters and various resources and documents, we actually have a very vivid picture of his life.

00:08:41.540 So we can get into those little details, but someone came into the shop one day and paid for something using an old South Sea shilling, which was obviously not, you know, a sort of native.

00:08:54.880 It had come from, well, from the South Seas, obviously.

00:08:57.540 So, and Cook was quite enamored with this coin.

00:09:00.620 And so he took it out of the till and swapped it for another one so he could keep it himself.

00:09:05.540 Um, but Sanderson sort of noticed that it was missing and accused him of stealing it.

00:09:11.600 And despite Cook's protestations, it really soured the, uh, the working relationship between them.

00:09:17.680 And so Cook asked to be, um, well, let go from his apprenticeship and for other arrangements to be made.

00:09:26.520 Right.

00:09:27.460 And so there's that when he moves on to...

00:09:29.740 Whitby.

00:09:30.460 Right.

00:09:30.720 Yeah.

00:09:31.180 So this is where Cook spends a huge chunk of his life.

00:09:35.640 He spends about seven years, the next seven years from the ages of, of about, uh, 17 to about 25, all in Whitby.

00:09:44.820 Now, Whitby is even now a really, really beautiful place.

00:09:49.800 It's a place that when you go into the old town coming down from the North, as Cook would have done, walking from the States and going across the bridge,

00:09:59.280 it's, you go into the old town and the old town there is a really, really beautiful place.

00:10:05.800 And in fact, I was there only this Monday, just gone, um, doing some last minute research and stuff.

00:10:11.840 But the, there's just to give people a flavor of it, there's like pie and mash shops in this old town and they have a banner, um, across the back of it that says we've been open through the reign of King Charles, the first King Charles, the second, and now King Charles, the third.

00:10:29.560 So that's how proudly they wear their heritage and the longevity of the history.

00:10:35.540 Uh, but within Whitby now as well is the Captain Cook Museum and the museum itself is the exact house that Cook lived in.

00:10:46.840 Right.

00:10:47.140 I've never been there.

00:10:48.020 Yeah.

00:10:48.500 You should.

00:10:49.220 It's, it's a really, it's actually really well presented and a really nice visit.

00:10:54.760 Um, but this was the house of John Walker and John Walker was the, uh, well, he owned, um, uh, a whole sort of slew of merchant ships, sort of the, operated the, uh, the coal trade along the North Sea and down to London.

00:11:14.160 And what's interesting to note about John Walker was he was, he and his family, they were all Quakers.

00:11:23.060 Right.

00:11:24.060 Which, um, meant that when you went into his house, as it's sort of been redone to look like today, it's not the same walls, but it's been redone to look like it.

00:11:37.040 Uh, Cook would have lived in a very simplistic environment because of their Quaker beliefs.

00:11:42.840 There would have been no portraits on the wall.

00:11:45.340 Uh, the furniture would have not been just whatever the latest fashion trend was.

00:11:49.580 It would have been a very simplistic way of living, but with a very strong, uh, like Protestant work ethic on steroids, um, in many ways and Cook, uh, thrived on it.

00:12:04.700 Right.

00:12:05.300 Yeah.

00:12:05.620 So that's the thing about Quakers. 1.00

00:12:06.640 If anyone doesn't know, um, it's a very, I mean, it's bouldering on puritanical, certainly in the 18th century.

00:12:12.840 I think modern Quakers are not necessarily, you know, like actual Puritans, like 17th century Puritans.

00:12:20.460 But, you know, it's, it's that way.

00:12:21.760 It's on that end of the spectrum.

00:12:23.000 Yes.

00:12:23.220 And, um, and you work bloody hard.

00:12:27.020 Yeah.

00:12:27.280 You talk about the Protestant work, I think.

00:12:28.980 Yeah.

00:12:29.160 Yeah.

00:12:29.560 You, um, you owe it to God to not really waste even sort of half an hour of your time.

00:12:37.060 And each day is sent to you so that you can work hard.

00:12:41.100 That's, that sort of thing.

00:12:42.140 Right.

00:12:42.380 Um, it does seem that Cook, um, yeah, was diligent, right?

00:12:47.900 Uh, he was a diligent person.

00:12:49.520 He wasn't, he wasn't really much of a dreamer, right?

00:12:52.100 Is that fair to say?

00:12:52.800 He's sort of quite a serious, quite a fairly serious person, right?

00:12:57.260 Yeah, he was.

00:12:58.020 He was definitely, as he grew up as well, he was what you would sort of characterize as the strong, silent type.

00:13:04.120 Right.

00:13:04.400 He wasn't a particularly, um, emotive man.

00:13:08.360 He was, he wasn't humorous really in many ways.

00:13:11.160 But what he was, was he was courageous and he was very, very, yeah, had an incredible work ethic and cared deeply about the people who he was, who were in his trust.

00:13:25.460 Uh, that's something that will become apparent as, as time goes on in the story.

00:13:28.960 But Mary Proud, the, uh, housekeeper, she noticed something distinctively brilliant about Cook and whilst all the apprentice, because he didn't, he went from being under the shopkeepers, um, stall to up in the attic with a whole host of other apprentices.

00:13:49.000 Because there was a number of apprentices.

00:13:50.620 And then if you got to the exam and you didn't, you know, if you failed it or you flunked it, then you were out.

00:13:56.520 But until then you all got to stay in the attic and Mary Proud, the housekeeper gave Cook, uh, a candle and a table so he could actually just study at night and read and take things, things in, um, because she noticed that he had a particular passion for learning and knowledge and just, uh, self-improvement.

00:14:16.960 So what was he doing particularly on ship in those, in that time?

00:14:23.380 He was learning the trade, right?

00:14:26.100 The, the, the art of being able to sail.

00:14:28.700 Yes.

00:14:29.060 Properly.

00:14:29.600 Definitely.

00:14:30.180 So he would have spent his time, uh, some of it would have been on land at the, the Naval college, the academy, learning the basic theoretical stuff.

00:14:39.820 And learning all of the nautical language about what is a, what's a fathom, what's a, you know, what's a knot, you know, what does it mean to double a cape and all those sorts of things.

00:14:49.460 And so you learn all of the, the whole language that comes around being a seafarer and then yes, on the actual ships themselves, he would have gotten the practical training and the Whitby, uh, colliers in particular, Whitby had been making ships ever since the reign of King Edward the first.

00:15:10.140 All right.

00:15:10.820 So it's got a real proud sort of history as a shipwright and as a place that, you know, build ships, but in Cook's time, they would have been these, what they would have sort of been colloquially called the Whitby cats.

00:15:25.720 And these were big, sturdy collier ships.

00:15:29.020 Right.

00:15:29.440 So they're not your average, you know, sort of swift swimming, swift swimming sloop or schooner.

00:15:34.620 These are big, bulky ships designed for carrying tons and tons of cargo and cold and merchant ships.

00:15:42.340 Right, right, right.

00:15:43.200 And so Cook would have learnt all of the most basics about the rigging and how to man the rigging and how to, um, uh, and taking command and, well, not taking command, but he'd have learnt from his, John Walker, who he went out with on many occasion.

00:16:00.080 And John, again, like so many other people before him, noticed something particularly, uh, brilliant about Cook.

00:16:07.300 And he just always stood out with a lot that he did.

00:16:12.040 Um, but eventually after a few years, he passed his examinations.

00:16:16.080 And from then on, it became a matter of sailing his own ship.

00:16:21.560 I think there was one called, uh, the Free Love, uh, and another one called the Friendship, aptly named.

00:16:29.180 Um, and so he sailed ships such as those, these Whitby cats down to London, down through the Thames towards Wapping and Deptford and those sorts of places, um, to transport all of the coal that was required in London around that time.

00:16:45.420 Um, for, uh, you know, fires and just, you know, the basic sort of things.

00:16:49.140 And we're sort of in very, very early industrial revolution as well.

00:16:53.240 So, but in expansion to all of that as well, Cook also went further afield.

00:16:59.420 And as I said, it was the North Sea coal trade.

00:17:02.640 So Cook would have got experience by sailing to places such as Copenhagen and Malmo and Stockholm and Danzig and all these places sort of along the northern coastline of Europe as well.

00:17:15.380 It goes far as Danzig.

00:17:16.880 Hmm.

00:17:17.560 Right.

00:17:17.980 Okay.

00:17:18.840 From what I remember.

00:17:19.760 Yeah.

00:17:20.020 So that is, that is, well, your ocean going really at that point.

00:17:22.920 I know it's the North Sea.

00:17:23.940 It's not like a transatlantic or trans-Pacific voyage, but there's pretty serious seas, the North Sea.

00:17:32.140 Um, if you can hack the North Sea between the North of England and Scandinavia, you'll probably be able to handle most seas.

00:17:40.540 I mean, there's some in the, in the South Seas that are probably worse, but still, um, yeah, it's, it's like, it's much harsher than say the Mediterranean or something.

00:17:51.100 Right.

00:17:51.520 Yeah.

00:17:51.740 Um, so yeah, you mentioned the industrial revolution in the very early industrial revolution.

00:17:56.300 Oh, absolutely.

00:17:57.620 Um, already something like coal or Coke or something or various things were absolutely vital that somewhere like London would be sort of endlessly thirsty for coal.

00:18:09.180 Um, uh, and so, yeah, sort of a vital trade.

00:18:13.660 Um, I'd love to go to Whitby, not just for the Captain Cook Museum, of course I would visit.

00:18:18.360 Sure.

00:18:18.680 Uh, but just in general, as you mentioned, it's supposed to be very, very nice.

00:18:23.460 It's a bit of an aside here, but is there some connection with Bram Stoker or Dracula, Whitby?

00:18:29.280 There's a Dracula museum as well.

00:18:32.780 Now, I've not read Bram Stoker's Dracula, but I think that it's in some way tangentially connected with Whitby.

00:18:41.340 Either Dracula, someone goes to Whitby in the story or maybe he wrote it in Whitby.

00:18:46.900 I, I'm not quite sure because it's not.

00:18:48.920 I think the character, the main character, not Dracula, the other guy.

00:18:51.520 But there is something to do with Dracula in Whitby, yeah.

00:18:54.260 Anyway, that was an aside.

00:18:55.240 Nothing to do with Captain, Captain Cook.

00:18:57.480 Um, okay, yeah, so, it's quite a few years then he's essentially, uh, in the Merchant Navy.

00:19:03.540 Um, on board Merchantmen and stuff.

00:19:05.680 Yes.

00:19:05.900 And those ships are quite, as you say, quite different.

00:19:08.320 They're designed so that they've, they've got massive hulls.

00:19:10.880 And they're, they're compared to a ship of war, um, slow.

00:19:15.240 And, um, it's just a completely different design.

00:19:18.420 Uh, completely different beast.

00:19:19.980 Yeah.

00:19:20.440 Right.

00:19:21.320 Um, so, yeah, how does he, how does he get over into the, into the Royal Navy then?

00:19:26.880 So, what happens here is that it's one of those times, we're coming up to about 1755 now.

00:19:33.640 And for anyone who knows their history, and we covered it sort of briefly in, um, the, the younger one that we did.

00:19:39.240 And obviously you and Kyle did the Seven Years' War.

00:19:41.340 But that's what's on the horizon.

00:19:42.900 The Seven Years' War is about to kick off.

00:19:44.840 And there's that feeling in, in Britain, it's sort of within the air.

00:19:50.000 People can tell that war is on the horizon.

00:19:53.720 And so Cook makes a choice.

00:19:56.500 He can either stay, and he's up for promotion, and be sort of the master of his own ship.

00:20:02.420 And enjoy a steady, stable, well-paid life in the merchant sort of class.

00:20:10.840 Uh, or he can take a pay cut and start right back at square one.

00:20:17.220 And basically, uh, volunteer to go into the Navy ahead of the Royal Navy.

00:20:22.980 The Royal Navy, yes, because he didn't want to get press-ganged into it.

00:20:26.900 To watch the full video, please become a Premium Member at LotusEaters.com.

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - June 09, 2024

PREVIEW： Epochs #162 ｜ Captain Cook - Part I

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript